This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2003-30358, filed on May 13, 2003, and No. 2004-27563, filed on Apr. 21, 2004, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein in their entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer, and more particularly, to a computer in which heat generating components can be noiselessly and efficiently cooled not using cooling fans.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, computers are comprised of a variety of functional parts. Representative examples of functional parts that may be installed in a computer case include a main board, a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics card, a sound card, a power supply, a hard drive, a floppy disk drive, a CD-ROM drive, a DVD-ROM drive, etc. These internal parts installed in the computer case are connected to external peripheral devices, for example, a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard, an external memory device, a printer, etc. Among such internal parts mounted in the computer case, the CPU, the graphics card, and the power supply are known as typical heat generating elements. When the temperatures of the internal parts are elevated by heat generated by these heat generating elements, the performances of the internal parts deteriorate and they may not function at all in the worst case. As more advanced computer systems appear, a larger amount of heat is generated by the heat generating components, raising a need to cool the heat generating components. This is one of the critical issues that the computer industry is facing.
A general method of cooling heat generating components installed in a computer case involves bringing a heat absorbing heat sink into contact with each of the heat generating components and blowing cooling air over the heat sinks using cooling fans. Various research projects, for example, research regarding changing a material or shape of such a heat sink, have been conducted to efficiently absorb or dissipate heat generated by the heat generating components. In conventional computer cooling systems developed up to date, commonly, each heat generating component installed in a computer case is cooled by a cooling fan attached to the same, and the air that is heated in the computer case is externally discharged by another cooling fan attached to the body of the computer base. However, such conventional computer cooling systems have the following problems.
Since a plurality of cooling fans, which turn at a high speed, are installed to cool the heat generating sources in the computer case, a large amount of noise is generated during operation of the computer system. Such noise generated by the cooling fans generally bothers computer users and lowers working efficiency. Another problem is that external dust particles stick to the parts in the computer case as the air is continuously exchanged with a large amount of external air by the cooling fan during the operation of the computer system. This problem becomes worst due to the electrostatic force generated by the internal parts and finally may lead to operational failures of the parts.
Another problem with the conventional computer cooling system lies in the inefficiency due to the active cooling of the heat generating components within the computer case. The internal temperature of a computer delimited by the computer case rises in a short time to be higher than the external temperature when the computer is operated. Thus, the heat generating components cannot be effectively cooled using the warm air in the computer case.